Elon Musk just sold his first Tesla share since 2016.
He made the move after he organised a Twitter poll asking his 63.2 million followers if he should sell 10% of his Tesla stock; he went further to add that he will abide by the results of the poll. Musk also added that he doesn’t take a cash salary or bonus. He has stocks, which is the only way for him to pay taxes personally.
The poll favoured him in selling the shares (about $5 billion). Elon still has 166 million shares.
Elon Musk previously hinted he was going to sell ‘a huge block’ of his options in the fourth quarter. The stock portion which he sold will be used to raise the cash he will need to pay his taxes.
After the poll, Tesla shares fell as some investors thought Elon wanted to sell more shares than expected. Elon’s holdings of Tesla shares increased by 1.2million shares (which is the difference between the number of shares he acquired and the number he sold).
For the first share sale in 2016, Musk sold about 3.6 million shares (which was worth $4 billion) in Tesla while he sold another 934,000 shares for $1.1 billion after he exercised options that nearly acquired 2.2 million shares.
The company’s share fell by 12% on Tuesday in a multiday sell-off that affected the trillion-dollar company, but by Wednesday recovered by 4.3%. Elon Musk has more than 20 million stock options that will be due to expire by August next year.
